Transition and Distraction

It’s that time of year. It’s the next to last week of school and everyone is distracted. Not just the kids, but the teachers too. In between classes I’m online, planning my summer travel. I’m in a slow panic about being ready to teach my summer university courses. My classroom needs to be organized before I leave for the summer, and with all the piles of random stuff here and there, it looks like a whirlwind hit. As I look out at my young students, I feel like I’m trying to keep a pot from boiling.

An activity I call “Weird Percussion” comes to the rescue. I drag out a large box that contains instruments that I’ve collected over the years. Shekeres are there, along with plastic tubes, tiny tambourines, clusters of kola nut shells, guiros, cabasas, and oddly shaped sound-makers that my sisters brought me back from their vacations. These are instruments that the students haven’t seen before. Each student takes one and explores them, looking for interesting sounds. This is not a day to be concerned about playing the instruments correctly. We are simply looking for a variety of sounds. The students are encouraged to play them inside out and upside down, with a stick and without, tapping them on their legs and on the floor.

Each child shares three sounds, one at a time around the circle. Then we create question and answer phrases, using the instrument as our voice. Even my 2nd graders can grasp the idea of “speaking” through the instrument, and they play expressively. We add a game of secretly deciding how two partners will play – happy, sad or angry. The two students play their conversation, and the rest of us guess which emotion they were expressing.

On another day, these same instruments can be used for categorizing and conducting – an activity I first learned from the Orff maestro Susan Kennedy. Three hula hoops are placed in the middle of the circle and we sort the instruments into those played by hitting, scraping, or shaking. Each type is placed into one hula hoop. Some of the instruments could be in two categories and interesting discussions arise as students defend their choice. Then students reclaim their instrument and gather on the section of the circle that is closest to “their” hula hoop. Then the conducting begins. A student steps in and out of a hula hoop to start and stop the sound of that section of instruments. The students soon discover that they can “play” one, two or three sections at a time, and can create nuances of slow and fast, long and short, sound and silence.

This is a lesson that had a cluster of boys say on the way out, “That was really fun!” Yeah, it was!

I’m curious to know what other ideas teachers pull out to bring order to the last few weeks. Please share some ideas if you like. Happy summer vacation!